Jurors To Weigh Nurse's Fate In 7 Deaths At Nursing Home

October 14, 1999|By Janan Hanna, Tribune Staff Writer.

BRAZIL, Ind. — The fate of Orville Lynn Majors, on trial for murdering seven nursing home patients with lethal injections of potassium chloride, is now in the hands of 12 jurors, who begin deliberations in the state's murder case against him on Thursday.

After weighing testimony they heard during the six-week trial, jurors will have to decide whether the patients, many with histories of serious illness, died of natural causes at Vermillion County Hospital in 1994 and 1995, as the defense maintains, or whether they were victims of murder.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Oct. 15, 1999:Corrections and clarifications.A story and headline Thursday on the murder trial of a hospital nurse misstated where the victims died. It was in Vermillion County (Ind.) Hospital, not a nursing home. The Tribune regrets the error.

Majors, who pleaded not guilty, did not testify at the trial.

Prosecution evidence was largely circumstantial. Much of the testimony from the 60 witnesses centered on arcane medical principles, and experts on each side offered dramatically different medical opinions.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers Wednesday tried to summarize it all during five hours of closing arguments at the Calumet County Courthouse in Brazil, about 60 miles east of Indianapolis. The trial was moved from Vermillion County because of pretrial publicity.

Prosecutors Nina Alexander and Gregory Carter said the combination of eyewitness testimony, medical testimony and physical evidence adds up to Majors' guilt in the deaths.

Relatives of many of the victims testified that Majors, 38, had injected something into their relatives' intravenous lines moments before the patients died. Others said Majors was the only person with the patients immediately before their hearts stopped beating.

The deaths of the patients, ages 56 to 89, were sudden, unexpected and were not consistent with their existing medical illnesses, prosecutors said.

Perhaps the most damaging pieces of evidence for the defense were empty vials of potassium chloride with multiple puncture holes found in the defendant's home and car. The drug, which is prescribed for an irregular heartbeat, can in high doses cause the heart to stop.

Also damaging to the defense was the testimony of two former friends, one of whom said Majors told him he hated old people and that "they should all be gassed." The other testified that Majors admitted killing the patients in a conversation in 1996, before his arrest.

Defense lawyers Carolyn Rader and I. Marshall Pinkus paid significant attention to the alleged admission that prosecutors say Majors gave to his former friend, Donald Miller. Rader characterized Miller's testimony as "a tale by an idiot" and questioned his credibility, reminding jurors that Miller did not go to police with his story in 1996, but waited until authorities approached him two years later, when Majors was already in jail.

Defense witnesses testified that the patients died as a result of their long battles with illnesses. One patient had broken her hip and had just returned from a risky surgical procedure when she died, the defense lawyers said.

Some of the patients' doctors, who are named as defendants in dozens of civil lawsuits that have been filed by families of Majors' patients, also testified that they believed the patients died natural deaths.

Rader said death is a difficult thing to accept. And while it might have seemed to members of the patients' families that their loved ones were on the road to recovery, "sometimes families and loved ones have failed memories."

"Life is a journey, death the destination," Rader said. "All seven of these people made that journey naturally and that journey ended at Vermillion County Hospital. A hospital is not an uncommon place to die."

"Life is a journey," prosecutor Carter agreed, seizing on the defense theme. "But these journeys ended prematurely. . . . Please don't let him get away with it. He killed these people."

Jurors did not hear evidence showing that death rates at the hospital had skyrocketed during the time Majors worked there, from 1993 to 1995, according to a probable cause affidavit prepared by police prior to Majors' arrest.

A study by Dawn Stirek, director of the intensive care unit, concluded that 121 patients died in the 54-bed unit during a 22-month period when Majors was working, as compared to 26 deaths during the same period when Majors was not on duty.